Philosophy Unbound: Schopenhauer vs. Steiner (Round One)

[Cleric K]

Yes, awaring is gifted as the catch of a pursue, when the pursue ends it's activity.

But as Will is a a dynamic relation between part and whole, it has aspects of both conformism and creative rebellion. The metaphycisal concept of "one" fails royally to express the aspect of struggle and challenge as elemental to activity in Creative Intelligence.

This is completely understandable when we consider that in Thinking we have only a small island where the World Will knows itself as the essential Being of the World. The remainder of that World Being confronts our small knowing part as something foreign. We can feel it, interact with it, rub against it but we don't have the inner intuitive life of that World Will, except within the bounds of our Thinking. As far as we don't understand, within the bounds of our small island, the Grand intuitive picture, we're sure to experience painful friction against what is greater than our conscious perspective.

The key is that the bounds of our island are not fixed but are the ever expanding horizon of our metamorphic process.

[SanteriSatama]

Yes, awaring is gifted as the catch of a pursue, when the pursue ends it's activity.

But as Will is a a dynamic relation between part and whole, it has aspects of both conformism and creative rebellion. The metaphycisal concept of "one" fails royally to express the aspect of struggle and challenge as elemental to activity in Creative Intelligence.

This is completely understandable when we consider that in Thinking we have only a small island where the World Will knows itself as the essential Being of the World. The remainder of that World Being confronts our small knowing part as something foreign. We can feel it, interact with it, rub against it but we don't have the inner intuitive life of that World Will, except within the bounds of our Thinking. As far as we don't understand, within the bounds of our small island, the Grand intuitive picture, we're sure to experience painful friction against what is greater than our conscious perspective.

The key is that the bounds of our island are not fixed but are the ever expanding horizon of our metamorphic process.

You say "essential being" as if World Will was a static object. I consider such 'fixed idea' a denial of most genuine Thinking, as World Will is the becoming of constant self re-creation.

Also, the "friction" is not only painful. Friction can be also orgasmic, and a touch, a caress as gentle as can be.

Struggle and challenge can be very pleasurable rewards of their own. Would you have chosen to be born in this time and place if you didn't enjoy and want challenges of interesting times?

[findingblanks]

"When I'm thinking about the table, I'm engaged with all my being in this activity and 'forget' that I'm thinking. Nevertheless, I continuously experience the intuitive meaning of this thinking activity in the most intimate way. When I snap out of it into the exceptional state, I now experience new invisible intuition which tells me that an instant ago I was engaged in the thinking about the table."

You will certainly be able to explain why my neighbor is not in your interpretation of the 'exception state' when he is working in his garage on a project and he suddenly snaps his head up with a big smile and says, "Oh, wow, I'm thinking about the gosh darn table!"

I imagine you'll explain to me why his experience isn't yet 'exceptional' because he hasn't really realized that 'an instant ago he was engaged in thinking about the table.' Please notice that even though I don't agree that your definitoin matches Steiner's, I do realize that you'll be able to tell me why my friend hasn't really realized that he was just thinking about a table.


"These are already more advanced topics, that require experience with meditation (of the spiritual-scientific kind) but I mention them just to make the bridge and bring to attention that we always live in intuition."

I think I said at the very very beginning of this that my comments would eventually lead to reminders that deep meditation is what allows us to really get at this. That is just one of the moves. Trust me, I'm not arguing with you regarding your mediation practice. I'm not brining up mine because I think it is a red herring and leaves far behind the clearer aspects of why Steiner insisted his sentences regarding the starting point did not require such experiences. But, I've said all I can as to why I think your conventional notion of 'exceptional state' is probably going to continue for a few more hundred years. That said, slowly but surely (in the last 15 years), I've found more and more serious readers of PoF who no longer hold this notion of 'exceptional state,' so I do think we are at the very beginning of seeing an evolution in how PoF is understood.

But, more importantly, I'll let my friend and then you have the final word:

"Oh, wow, I was just thinking about the table!"

"When I snap out of it into the exceptional state, I now experience new invisible intuition which tells me that an instant ago I was engaged in the thinking about the table."

[findingblanks]

"In all conversations here, with you, Eugene, FB, there's a common element - the insistence that somehow, the meaningful awareness that we experience in ordinary thinking, is principally and irreconcilably different from the meaningful awareness that we experience everywhere else."

Nope. There is a reason why you will fail to show me saying that. Certainly, you may (and probably must) interpret some of my comments that way. But you never seem to reflect on how your ideas cause some of your interpretations. I do this by showing my assumptions and then put them next to experiences.

For instance, I certainly have experienced suddenly realizing that I'm thinking about X.

I am the one claiming that this is deeply meaningful. I've said from the beginning that we are always having cognitive experience. I've said Steiner made missteps when he suggests that we must locate a spot before thinking happens.

I think all of those comments by Steiner (even if we find ways to show that he really meant this or that) have lead students to believe there is 'pure experience' that is in need of thinking's activity.

Anyway, you very often put words in my mouth. That's okay!

I hope you see my previous post in which I acknowledge that your logic has internal coherence, and that you certainly will be able to explain why your version of 'exceptional state' (as the sudden awareness of having a thought) does not apply to my friend. You may need to refer to meditative experiences or you might have to explain to me why my friend only THINKS he has suddenly awoken to the fact that he was thinking but in reality he is not yet seeing the special invisible threads that really mark the 'exceptional state.'

To be clear, when I've said (over and over) that experience is inherently cognitive. I've meant it. When I've claimed that it is not very helpful to insist upon concepts like "we must notice the pure experience that precedes any thinking", I've meant it.

And, that said, I know you really mean it when you say that I've been insisting that the meaningful experience of thinking is somehow different than something else.

However, that said, I do make distinctions between different kinds of cognitive experience. for instance, staring at a painting, feeling drowsy, doing math, and recognizing the fundamental nature of the spirit can be distinguished phenomenological. That doesn't mean they aren't all cognitive. But I'm sure you realize that.

[AshvinP]

That said, slowly but surely (in the last 15 years), I've found more and more serious readers of PoF who no longer hold this notion of 'exceptional state,' so I do think we are at the very beginning of seeing an evolution in how PoF is understood.

Oh man, that's a terrible sign...

It reminds me of how we see an "evolution" in how underlying Reality is "understood". As science rules out space-time, matter, physical 'things' of all sort from being fundamental, people project a complete void and/or say, "there is no essential underlying Reality". In other words, when the going gets tough and they are asked to Think through these things, or God forbid they are asked to Think about their own thinking, they turn around and start running backwards! Could this thread be a microcosm of that entire trend? Could the fact that we still don't know what you actually think about the evolutionary possibilities of higher spiritual cognition, which Cleric outlined yet again in his recent detailed post, after 40+ pages of comments, because you keep avoiding the questions and points made to dwell eternally in Chapter 3 of PoF, be a type of this nihilistic archetype? I suppose time will tell, but if you could just manage to respond plainly with an answer, maybe we could avoid some of the waiting in suspense.

[findingblanks]

"Only our directly given world-picture can offer such a starting point, i.e. that picture of the world which presents itself to man before he has subjected it to the processes of knowledge in any way, before he has asserted or decided anything at all about it by means of thinking. This “directly given” picture is what flits past us, disconnected, but still undifferentiated."

Steiner goes on to say that we never actually have this experience, but the reader can go on to notice each time Steiner uses the term 'directly-given world picture' in a way that assumes it is an experience.

" Error is wholly excluded only by saying: I eliminate from my world-picture all conceptual definitions arrived at through cognition and retain only what enters my field of observation without any activity on my part."

If you notice that many students insist there is a 'spot' before thinking has had any effect, you should have to look far as to why.

Some of us are saying that the assumption that there is something prior to cognitive experience reveals a misunderstanding of experience itself.

"This is why the directly given is not defined as long as the relation of such a definition to what is defined is not known. Even the concept: “directly given” includes no statement about what precedes cognition."
"The starting point for our theory of knowledge was placed so that it completely precedes the cognizing activity, and thus cannot prejudice cognition and obscure it."

When Steiner does this, we tend to quickly help him out by explaining what 'precedes' really means.

Steiner made absolutely clear The Philosophy of Freedom is only grasped when an individual transforms himself.

I don't agree with him. But I see why he probably experienced it that way and, therefore, thought it was essential. I have a more non-dual overall interpretation of PoF, which is why I object to all the ways people over-spiritualize it's core terms, insinuating that a given phrase responds to a complex and esoteric experience that requires paragraphs of beautiful and intricate descriptions.

I'm glad Steiner gave the example of "I am thinking of a table" as his exceptional state. And I'm glad he made clear that this isn't yet living within present thinking. And I fully understand why 99% of his students take 'exceptional state' to involve complex realizations about moving X experience closer to Y or capturing invisible strings of knowing or fully absorbing the intricate seed-state of becoming or utterly extricating themselves from the fierce habits of modern thought and on and on and on.

For all my disagreements with how Steiner sets up his starting point, I think he did a pretty good job highlighting what is so special about our capacity to notice what we are thinking. And I know that for most of you my previous sentence is head-scratchingly naive. Why can't I see that the 'exceptional state' is the conscious transformation of the human soul that Steiner describes PoF accomplishes.

Like I said, I'm more non-dual. I can't really find a person who isn't already living that transformation. But that doesn't mean I can't understand why Steiner thought it was a 'path' that hardly anybody alive had yet even begun to tread. That's how he experienced it and he was convinced that he was initiatiating a process that would only very slowly become available to mankind.

Remember, Steiner also believed that it would take white people another 1,500 years to accomplish their mission for the Earth. He had some specific ideas that guy

[findingblanks]

Ashvin, so do you now agree with Cleric and I that all experience is cognitive?

[findingblanks]

"If a theory of knowledge is really to explain the whole sphere of knowledge, then it must start from something still quite untouched by the activity of thinking, and what is more, from something which lends to this activity its first impulse. This starting point must lie outside the act of cognition, it must not itself be knowledge. But it must be sought immediately prior to cognition, so that the very next step man takes beyond it is the activity of cognition." - Steiner

Of course this spot previous to thinking doesn't exist.

Can you see why some of us do not agree with Steiner that the only way we can begin a valid epistemology is to conceptualize a field of experience that is pure chaos?

Can you see why even our disagreements show there are many other valid starting points that much more clearly point to the nature of experience?

But Steiner says over five times in his core texts that it is impossible to begin understanding the starting point unless we first must conceptualize a 'pure chaos' that must precede the effects that thinking has upon it.

I promise you this. Not everybody agrees that this is the only way we can begin. In fact, some of us think there is no need at all to imagine a field of pure chaos that precedes cognition.

Taboo.

[AshvinP]

Ashvin, so do you now agree with Cleric and I that all experience is cognitive?

No one has ever denied that. I really wish you had read some of my essays on here, because confusion around this basic point would have been avoided - I discuss Barfield's ideas, which also stem from Steiner as you know, at significant length and detail (especially in Metamorphoses of the Spirit essays). All experience is cognitive and experience of cognitive activity is always evolving, exactly as Cleric described in his recent lengthy post. There are clear spiritual implications of this metamorphic progression for each individual's capacity and duty in the unfolding of experience towards spiritual freedom and ethics. And that's what I want to know your position on - do you agree with the implications identified by Steiner and Barfield or not? Feel free to take their writings as a whole - I may not be as familiar as you are with Steiner's entire corpus, but I am familiar enough for purposes of that question.

[findingblanks]

"There are clear spiritual implications of this metamorphic progression for each individual's capacity and duty in the unfolding of experience towards spiritual freedom and ethics."

Yes, I think Steiner's views show us the wide breadth of these implications. That we can recognize aspects that are obviously insightful and practically helpful and that we can recognize confident assertions that are grounded in niavete, that we can see the deep ways he saw and helped individuals and groups and that we can see paranoid worries about various people...that he could explain in detail why red supposedly is the cause of the bulls rage and that he could explain in detail why non-white skin produces demons when the Christ approaches it....that he could show how the movements of child's fingers when knitting help us understand how to teach math in more enlivened way, and that he could often claim that only negative intentions could account for some misunderstandings of his work...that he cared so deeply about the terrible path we were going down, that he imagined so exactly effective new approaches to so many social contexts, that he could easily justify his use of tabacoo (hey, why not, he certainly wasn't addicted) and also explain why a sip of wine will throw a person's personal evolution back decades.... His path towards spiritual freedom and ethics is such a wonderful picture of the typical human being. And he helped us see why the typical human being is anything but typical.

Like with other wonderful geniuses, we will hopefully continue mining Steiner for all the gold he offered us. Can we see why many of his students declare that non-white people objectively aren't connected to the Christ or at least not as naturally as they are? Of course? Does this mean Steiner was racist? Of course not. He simply made errors and hoped we'd spot them and try to understand them.

One tiny implication of his work is that eventually he'd have students who took him seriously. I have a tiny hunch that this would make a positive difference to his legacy.

But I'll never claim that there is an objective list of all the deep and wonderful implications of his work or that I or anybody understands them better. I trust the people who hold huge figures like Steiner in a complex and ambiguous manner that they deserve. I am distrustful of narratives that sum them up in grand and simple terms. Not everybody does that. Some people recognize that Steiner can handle the praise and the criticisms and all the wonderful work in between.

This clearly didn't answer your question. No, rather, it gave you even more reason to scratch your head about me. Or not!

As for Barfield, we can see all the different thinkers who have taken up aspects of his work into theirs and are finding unique ways to imagine the inherent connection between consciousness and evolution.

I am of the opinion that Anthorposohy is alive and well in many peripheral fields outside of the movement itself. It's trying hard to poke its head back into the game.